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SINFUL BUT NOT FORSAKEN. 



.--g| 



A SERMON, 

PREACHED IN THE 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, FIFTH AVENUE AND 
NINETEENTH STREET, NEW YORK, 



DAY OF ]^ATIONAL FASTI:NG, 

JANUARY 4, 186L 



BY 



ALEXANDER T. McGILL, 



OF PEINCETON, NEW JERSEY. 



[PCBtlSHED BY R E Q E 8 T. ] 



NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 683 BROADWAY. 

1861. 






-c>>4 



n 



SINFUL BUT NOT FORSAKEN. 



A SERMON, 

PREACHED IN THE 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, FIFTH AVENUE AND 
NINETEENTH STREET, NEW YORK, 



DAY OF :NATI0]^AL FASTING, 



JANUARY 4, 1861. 



BY 

ALEXANDER T. McGILL, 

OF PEINCETON, NEW JERSEY. 



J^PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.] 



NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 683 BROADWAY. 

1861. 



E^4d 
.5 

M/43 



SERMON. 



" For Israel hath not been forsaken nor Judah of his God, of the 
Lord of hosts ; though their land was filled with sin against the 
Holy One of Israel."— Jeremiah, li. 6. 

To be all but gone is a condition of despair to 
any man but a Christian. While there is nothing 
more than the conviction of sin against the Holy 
One of Israel, men of the world will have their 
hopes ; and because sentence against an evil work 
is not executed speedily, their hearts are fully set 
in them to do evil. But when judgments are actu- 
ally upon them, and calamity comes to be realized, 
they "are at their wit's end," their hands hang 
down in the weakness of dismay. They have not 
•-courage to stand " between the dead and the living," 
or go down to the bottom of deep distress, with 
nothing but a confiding hope that they are not 
wholly forsaken of God. This belongs only to the 



man who has God for "his God," and knows him 
to be " the Lord of hosts." It is not for us to de- 
spair, when we see no possibility of relief in visible 
expedients. 

When Charles V. imperiously required the Con- 
fession of Augsburg to be abandoned, and gave the 
Protestant leaders only six months more in which to 
make up their minds finally, the cause of the Refor- 
mation was thought to be hopeless. But Luther 
exclaimed, " I saw a sign in the heavens, as I looked 
out of my window at night — the stars, the hosts of 
heaven held up in a vault above me ; and yet I could 
see no pillars on which the Master had made it to 
rest. But I had no fear it would fall. Some men 
look about for the pillars, and would fain touch them 
with their hands, as if afraid the sky would fall. 
Poor souls ! Is not God always there ? " The pil- 
lars of our vault so beautifully starred below the 
heavens, our Federal arch, are falling, and the arch 
itself is breaking, and all expedients to prop and 
restore it have utterly failed. And now, the great 
question in this extremity of peril is, where is our 
God ? We are sure he is angry with us ; our sin has 
found us out. But is he gone forever ? Are we 
now " forsaken," as a widow is left when her hus- 
band, or an orphan is left when her father, is dead ? 
— the true force of the term in our text. He hath 



said to natons, if ye forsake me I will forsake you ; 
and we are met this day to try our ways, and see 
how far we have forsaken him. However unlike 
our circumstances in most respects may be, to those 
of Israel and Judah when this prophecy was utter- 
ed, there are four particulars, in which they appear 
to be strikingly similar : 

1st. Our land is full of sin against the Holy One 
of Israel. 

2d. The punishment of sin is already upon us. 

3d. There is evidence to believe that God has 
not forsaken us yet. 

4th. He is our only help and hope in such a 
crisis. 

I. The proprieties of a national humiliation be- 
fore the God of our fathers, lead me to mention 
only such sins as this whole nation should deplore 
with ingenuous contrition. Not sins, however, my 
brethren, which belong to the nation, and not to 
ourselves individually : it is even mainly because 
we have sinned as individuals, that God is filling us 
now with consternation and sorrow. 

(1) Consider then, in the first place, that we are 
a nation of " boasters." There is not one of us, 
probably, whose soul has not been lifted up with 
pride for the greatness of our country, in every par- 
ticular, which constitutes true national grandeur. 



Her traditions, her immunities, her extent of terri- 
tory, her advancement in resources of moral and 
intellectual power, as well as material greatness, 
have filled her sons and daughters everywhere, and 
especially when abroad, with inexpressible pride and 
exultation. 

Our fathers would have looked on these things 
with gratitude, more than pride. If there was one 
feeling more than another, like a Christian grace, 
which predominated in the breasts of those who 
framed our Constitution, it was humility. With 
trembling solicitude, they started what they knew 
to be an experiment, which the world had never 
witnessed before ; except in the solitary model of 
the Hebrew commonwealth, wliich first gave the 
hint of a mixed general and state or tribal govern- 
ment. Although their excessive jealousy of a state 
religion led them, in the opposite extreme of shun- 
ning theocratic forms, to adopt a Constitution which 
might be the political creed of an atheist as well as 
a Christian (for which, perhaps, God is angry with 
us till this day), still they did their work with hum- 
bleness of mind. And if, instead of leaning on the 
work of their hands, more than we lean on God 
our maker, if, instead of blazoning on every page 
of our national literature, paeans to the immortal 
instrument of our liberties and glory, we had re- 



tained the same humility, and watched over it with 
the meekness and fear in which it originated, we 
would not this day be covered with the shame and 
confusion of a stupendous failure. God will not give 
his glory to another, neither -his praise to graven 
images. Though graven upon eternal brass, our Con- 
stitution were not better than the idols he abhors, 
when we lavish upon it the incense of such vain- 
glorious devotion. And it is a marvellous way with 
the Almighty, in punishing boasters, to do it sud- 
denly. In one hour a king of kings was changed, 
from a vaunting monarch to a grazing beast, for the 
proud boast: "Is not this great Babylon, that I 
have built for the house of the kingdom, by the 
might of my power, and for the honor of my majes- 
ty?" 

Let us not reckon this sin to be a little one, com- 
paratively venial on the catalogue of sins, to be 
acknowledged this day. See it, where the spirit of 
inspiration has enrolled it, along with the darkest 
crimes that belong to any degenerate age. Rom. i. 
29-32 ; also 2 Tim. iii. 1-5. 

(2) Prominently given in both these catalogues, 
is the secojid sin I mention, for which we should 
be humiliated as a people — covetousness. " For 
the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and 
smote him : I hid me, and was wroth, and he went 



8 



on frowardly in the way of his heart." It is said 
our plan of union would hardly have been adopted 
at all, but for the clamor of material interests. The 
utter confusion of commerce and finance under the 
old confederation, and the incurable uncertainty of 
markets and exchange, without a common rule, con- 
strained many, who were otherwise opposed to the 
experiment, to try it — venturing, as they supposed, 
a political peril, for the protection by a common 
flag, of our sails on every sea, and our citizens in 
every corner of the earth. But who does not know 
that this common security has proved a snare to the 
souls of men, and made our nation a proverb of 
greed over all the world ? He who would have us 
let our moderation be known to all men, and tells us 
that covetousness is idolatry; and they "who will 
be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into 
many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in 
destruction and perdition ; " who has added to these 
admonitions of his word, many a signal warning in 
his providence — sending panic after panic, even 
while the world was coming to buy our cotton, our 
grain, and our gold ; and who has so often made us 
feel the very same insecurity we had escaped, in the 
fluctuating policy of the Government we adored, 
now at length says, in the thunder of his wrath, 



9 



" In vain have I smitten your children, they receive 
no correction." 

I speak not of enormous and fraudulent grasping 
for money ; the shameless corruption which seems 
to reign at the Federal capitol, and every State capi- 
tol of the Union ; the astounding defalcations that 
make the ears of men to tingle — betraying such a 
loss of public virtue, as itself to incur the avenging 
displeasure of God upon the nation ; but that inor- 
dinate love of the world, whicli prevails even among 
the people of God, rich and poor — the love of 
money for its own sake, and for the sake of pleasures 
in the world, that "nourish their hearts as for the 
day of slaughter." 

(3) The bands with which we flattered ourselves 
the Union was being indissolubly bound together, 
have been made offensive to the Holy One of Israel. 
The rivers and the railroads were thought to be like 
arteries and veins in the human body, which would 
bring the people of every terminus more and more 
to beat with kindred feelins: and a common interest. 
But these thoroughfares have been made by man's 
cupidity to break the laws of God ; to profane his 
holy Sabbath ; to cheat each other in a ruinous com- 
petition ; and to rob the country at large — thousands 
of poor men, whose investments have been sunk, 
by guilty recklessness and actual fraud. With all 



10 



the honorable exceptions that should be made, the 
land is filled with sin by the very spread of enter- 
prises, which go to make one brotherhood of the 
nation. 

(4) It is filled with sinful abuse of rulers. " Thou 
shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy 
people." No matter who it is that holds the reins 
of government at Washington, in every political 
agitation, the land is full of maledictions upon him. 
And never, perhaps, were these so bitter and in- 
sulting as at present. Yet he is the minister of God 
to us, who beareth the sword by the ordinance of 
Heaven, whose venerable name should be guarded 
from contempt, in the arms of " supplications, pray- 
ers, intercessions, and giving of thanks," according 
to J the divine exhortation. How many even of 
God's own people, in this day of rebuke and blas- 
phemy, have'reason to deplore the idle words and 
unclean lips, with which they have sinned in this 
thing against the Holy One of Israel ! 

Even if our President were the most perfect 
man that ever sat upon the chair of Washington, for 
wisdom and patriotism, decision and courage, the 
tempest of execration upon him of late is enough to 
make the strong man reel and stagger ; to provoke 
Almighty God to take his understanding from him, 
and make our chief ruler a child ; in order to punish 



11 



the "frowardness" of a cursing republic. I have 
long feared, that for this iniquity alone, in which we 
have a bad pre-eminence, we should become a by- 
word among the nations, and suffer the terrible 
retribution, which the Bible approves: "As he 
clothed himself with cursing like as with a garment, 
so let it come into his bowels like water, and like 
oil into his bones." 

(5) The land is full of sins in the family govern- 
ment ,' that holy and happy institute, which underlies 
all social order, and integrity of the commonwealth. 
The nurseries of piety and fraternal love, from which 
every tree that gives either fruit or shade must be 
transplanted to the State, have become hotbeds of 
political ambition. Time was, when the most ani- 
mating topics of conversation at the fireside were 
lessons in the Bible and the catechism, the pastor's 
sermon, the missionary's letter, and the weekly 
journal, with its summary of important events. But 
now the newspaper, morning, noon, and night ; the 
newspaper, with the returns of some election, or the 
virulent dissection of some political candidate ; the 
newspaper, with its depraved insinuations and its 
incendiary lies, to inflame the wicked passions of 
the soul — is the pabulum of covenanted households, 
week-day and Sabbath. Boys are politicians. Pub- 
lic life is a game they are taught from infancy to 



12 



play without heart or conscience; the universal 
trade, in which nothing is at a discount so much as the 
capital of true patriotism and consistent integrity. 
From the cradle to the grave our people now talk 
politics. No wonder God comes down to curse a 
Babel like this, with confusion of counsels and 
tongues. No wonder fanaticism has left the clois- 
ters of religious bigotry to seize on politicians, 
North and South, East and West, until it now rides 
on the whirlwind of passions, which have had a 
life-long ferment in the animosities of party. 

But where could the catalogue end of spe- 
cialties in sins, which may be fliirly charged upon 
all the people of all sections, who are called this 
day to fasting and supplication? And when we 
consider that each section has its own peculiar ini- 
quities, for which to be humbled, and that every 
State apart, and every city apart, and every 
family apart, and every individual apart, has 
other specialties to be cast into the fearful ag- 
gregate ; and not the multitude only, but the 
magnitude also of our iniquities, each trespass b^ 
itself " grown to the heavens,'' by reason of aggra- 
vations in the abuse of light, and liberty, and 
warnings, and forbearance, — ! how should we 
" abhor ourselves and repent in dust and ashes ! " 

II. The punishment of our sin is actually upon 



13 



us. So the text intimates in the original force of 
the term, and so we feel in the sad realities, which 
this day fill us with grief and dreadful appre- 
hension. Every flash of the telegraph is bring- 
ing new tidings of peril and disaster. The most 
fixed and trusting of God's children seem to be 
*' afraid of evil tidings." Never was judgment 
so swift of foot against the sins of any nation. 
Centuries are days. The gradual decay of na- 
tions with which we are familiar in the traditions 
of the past, working with its bane through many 
long generations, and covering with a flush of 
health the body politic, while disease is on the 
vitals, is not the way of death decreed to this gi- 
gantic empire. Three months ago, we were count- 
ed over all the earth as the most favored of na- 
tions. Hitherto incredulous men that glory in 
the yoke of hereditary power, were talking, in 
view of the crisis at hand (our Presidential elec- 
tion), about the well-known elasticity of this fabric; 
how it had so often withstood commotions of the 
people, and was wont to settle down more firmly 
tnan ever, from the agitations with which it had 
been tossed. But, alas! — how changed — "our glo- 
rious beauty is a fading flower ! " Secession — 
angry secession — bloody secession — all the horrors 
of a fratricidal war have made bare the arm. And 



14 



not in sudden frenzy, or by mistake, which has 
roused to fury unwonted passions; but it seems, 
that wrath, long brooded, sullen, and reserved, 
proclaims the unalterable purpose — by right of self- 
preservation, and by the obligations of a sacred 
trust committed to its keeping by Almighty God — 
to dash this Government to pieces ! Fanaticism 
from the North, and fanaticism from the South, 
seem now at length to be left alone upon the field ; 
and a fight like theirs must be eternal. Only the 
Father of eternity can be our help and hope in such 
a crisis; and let us turn from the dark picture 
before us, to see what evidence we have, that he 
has not wholly forsaken us. 

III. (1) We have not yet been filled with that 
inveteracy of sin, for which Israel and Judah were 
ultimately cast off from the Lord, as we have it 
described by his apostle, 1 Thess. ii. 15. The 
great heart of the American people, sinful as it may 
be, revolts alike from the punishment upon us, and 
its proximate causes on every side. And could 
we but look away from the confusion of politicians, 
to the deep yearning of millions, who have t(to 
long intrusted their common weal to men of 
selfish ambition, and hear the great constituencies 
which make up the heritage of God in our land, 
say to the man of conscience and unostentatious 



15 



talents, ' the post of honor is no longer in a pri- 
vate station — the Lord hath need of thee to guide 
the counsels of the country ; and these obstinate, 
corrupt, and designing demagogues that have 
brought our country to the brink of ruin, must be 
discarded forever,' — then might we hope, even yet, 
that the breach already made is not "wide as the 
sea," and that we can all live together, as brethren, 
" quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and 
honesty." 

(2) Family ties and friendships, bauds of con- 
sanguinity and afi&nity, remain between the North 
and the South, to draw, with cords of love, the 
alienated sections together. These delicate tendrils 
seem indeed to be nothing now, in the tempest of 
passion. But they will be entwined to a mighty 
cord, when reason is allowed to resume her throne, 
and the irrepressible instincts of Christian civiliza 
tion gather back the force, to which political rage 
has always submitted. 

(3) One church is yet undivided. Though 
great and popular churches of the land have led 
in this work of sectional strife, and anticipated the 
country in the folly of disunion, and much respon- 
sibility for the calamities we mourn may be resting 
on the heads of ecclesiastics, one church remains ; 
in more than nominal union, a union of heart and 



16 



soul, though sadly pained this day at the rash and 
inflammatory utterances within her of eloquent 
tongues. I believe the union of States might crum- 
ble into fragments, and the Old School Presbyterian 
Church would not be dismembered. A very slen- 
der filament, you say, to span a gulf already made, 
and widening every hour : the surges already in 
the breach are too violent for any common interest 
to live. But remember, that if this bond remain at 
all, it must be, as it has been for a century and 
more, on grounds of intelligent comprehension of 
the whole question at issue, and therefore on 
grounds quite sufficient to bring the country to- 
gether in abiding peace. Who knows but that it 
may be the glorious mission of the Presbyterian 
Church, in these last and perilous days, to wipe out 
the scandal which has rested on visible Christianity 
ever since the days of the apostles ; and instead of 
civil power interposing to heal divisions in the 
Church, the Church will come, with plastic hand, to 
bind a shattered confederacy in better union than 
ever? 

(4.) The revivals of religion over all our land, 
so recent, prove that God has not forsaken us — that 
" God in the midst of us is mighty ; he will save ,* 
he will joy over us with joy ; he will rest in his 
love, and joy over us with singing." True, indeed. 



ir 



ever since the day of Pentecost prepared the Church 
for her martyr age, a great baptism of the Holy 
Ghost has often been precursor to a baptism of 
blood, upon the Church and the country. The 
great awakening of the last century, under the min- 
istry of Whitfield, Edwards, the Tennents, and 
others, which filled the land with so many converts 
of righteousness, came like a harbinger, to prepare 
the American people for long and gloomy wars; 
war with the French and the Indians, and war with 
the mother country herself, in our hard Revolution. 
A great revival in the early years of this century, 
in which the whole country shared, and especially 
that region which had been most insurgent under 
the first trial of our government, came in mercy to 
prepare the country for the war of 1812 ; in which 
our whole fabric was terribly shaken, by intestine 
conflicts, as well as outward foes ; when the liberty 
of the press was put down by mobs, and a distin- 
guished soldier of the Revolution was murdered by 
the populace of Baltimore, in a prison. That was a 
time when the sages of the land were despondent, 
-as they are now, for the ultimate success and integ- 
rity of this Government. 

What, then, if even the worst period of our 
eventful history be now upon us, and tribulation 
such as the land has never seen, be now at hand, for 
2 



18 



" the trial of the innocent," as well as punishment 
of the guilty, in a common desolation ? These in- 
timations may assure us, that God means to stand 
by us, and that "the Hope of Israel and Saviour 
thereof in time of trouble," is not standing by us 
only " as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring 
man that turneth aside to tarry for a night." 

(5) The conspicuous instrumentality, which 
"the Lord of hosts" has been shaping for his own 
ends, in the progress of the Gospel and redemption 
of the world. Two great nations, the freest on 
earth, speaking a common language, and promulg- 
ing a common faith, on opposite hemispheres, are 
confederates in the hand of our enthroned Messiah, 
for the salvation of men. Lately, the treasures of 
the earth were put into their hands, by remarkable 
discoveries, about the same time ; and along with 
this magnificent inheritance to each, international 
jealousies have changed to confidence and kindness, 
and a feeling of friendship, which at this moment is 
a fervent flame. Think you, that one of these 
powers will now be taken, and the other left, in the 
work of the world's regeneration ? That the older, 
one is destined to advance with the high commission 
upon her, while the younger one expires in the 
convulsions of a day ? That the mother must out- 
live the daughter ; and an empire, on which the sun 



19 



can never set, may defy dismemberment, while we 
are failing to belt a single continent with our civili- 
zation ? No : I cannot think it. Remember how 
the English empire had nearly fallen to pieces, but 
three years ago, and the world pronounced her 
Asiatic domination at end. Yet God preserved it ; 
coming as the Lord of hosts, in the darkest hour of 
her extremity, because he had not forsaken her. 
And will he not be quite as sure to come for our 
help, and preserve her ally here, with unbroken en- 
ergies for the same great end — millennial peace and 
glory to a ruined world ? 

(6) God has not forsaken us, because we are 
here with him, in his sanctuary this day, invited by 
his own word, and led by his own providence, to 
humble ourselves, just where "he waiteth to be 
gracious." Political sanctions from opposite sources, 
your President and your Governor, with one voice 
commend the act of this humiliation. " Our God " 
will never disappoint the hope he has himself ex- 
cited ; he never moves the hearts of men to bow in 
common contrition, without an answer of peace and 
1^ an interposition of mercy. Yet, however sure we 
are, that it is good for us to draw nigh unto God, 
we may not be sure, that the specialty of deliver 
ance we crave is the best form for us, in which our 
prayer may be answered. Let it now suffice, 



20 



IV. That He is our only help and hope. 
.*' Should not a people seek unto their God ? " All 
refuge else has failed. Vain is the help of man. 
His best devices only aggravate disorder, and make 
the alienation more incurable. The destiny of our 
" delightsome land " no sagacity of man foresees — 
never was the futurity of a nation so impenetrable. 
We are balancing on the finger of infinite sover- 
eignty. We deserve the worst ; we hope for the 
best. All that we can see and know is, that our 
God has not forsaken us, and that he is " the Lord 
of hosts " — that if he will deign to grant our literal 
request, all impossibilities vanish. " The stars in 
their courses fight against Sisera." But if not, we 
know that God himself is a refuge, " an hiding 
place from the wind, and a covert from the tem- 
pest." If he is with us as individuals, as families, 
and as churches, then may confederacies be dis- 
solved, and all the foundations of the earth be out 
of course ; but leaning on his almighty arm we go 
up from the wilderness, happy and safe. 

The sovereignty of grace and the sovereignty 
of power, which the Holy One of Israel expresses ^ 
on the face of my text, are "the two immutable 
things," to which we must fly for strong consola- 
tion, in this hour of trouble. Close in with the 
first, and the second will be sure to give you repose 



21 



and satisfaction, whatever befalls us. You know 
perhaps already, what it is to lie at the feet of sove- 
reign power, adoring it as good, even when it has 
torn from your embrace the dearest creatures on his 
footstool, because you feel that sovereign groioe is 
yours in covenant, and better to you than the uni- 
verse besides. In such posture of the soul it is, 
that we must bow to the good pleasure of the Most 
High, as we leave in his hand the destiny of our 
beloved country. If he will be pleased to give us 
back our union, and peace, and mutual affection, we 
shall adore him ; and " in the name of our God Ave 
will set up our banners." But if he will suffer man 
to prevail, with the desolating fury of his passions, 
and the axes of angry infatuation, to break down 
the carved work of our beautiful edifice, then " a 
glorious high throne from the beginning is the place 
of our sanctuary ; " and we turn to it with full as- 
surance of protection and repose : " Come, my 
people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy 
doors about thee ; hide thyself as it were for a lit- 
tle moment, until the indignation be overpast." 

" When, in the time of the Judges, the children 
of Israel gave themselves up in a shameless manner 
to the worship of idols, they fell under the wrath 
of God, and were eighteen years oppressed by the 
Ammonites and Philistines. Still, when they came 



22 



to themselves, and cried to the Lord, they joined to 
their repentance lowly submission, and said, ' We 
have sinned : do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth 
good unto thee.' This is the temper which sancti- 
fied affliction always begets, so that the prostrate 
soul dares no longer to impose terms on Jehovah,, 
but yields itself to his sovereign discretion. There 
is peace in such surrender, a peace which is alto- 
gether independent of any expected mitigation of 
the stroke."* These are the words of one who 
was a great link between the North and the South ; 
whose voice would have been more potent in the 
din of this confusion, than that of any minister who 
survives him ; but whom his Master, in mercy to 
him, took away from the evil to come. And may 
we all, with " like precious faith," when our work 
is done, be gathered to the same happy home ; 
where " the days of our mourning shall be ended " 
— where sin and sorrow caij reach us no more — 
where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the 
weary are at rest." 

* Alexander on Consolation, p. 231 



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